By serving on the New Kensington-Arnold Youth Commission, Aaron Moore hopes to provide troubled children with the father figure he lacked growing up.

“I see myself in them,” Moore said. “I've been where they've been.”

Moore is one of at least a half-dozen Arnold and New Kensington residents volunteering as mentors for children who have committed crimes and are being processed through Westmoreland County's juvenile court and probation system.

Members of the youth commissions, which exist in every Westmoreland County school district and are believed to have originated in the 1960s, traditionally have acted as volunteer probation officers for first-time offenders who commit minor, non-violent minor crimes.

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